My Week of Go Activities - BenKyo League is Growing Quickly

 

The BenKyo League (BKL) is really taking off. In this past month alone seven new members have been added to the roster and more are on the way. There is no better time to join BenKyo League as we head into November likely to add one or even two new leagues to our Main Leagues.

Take a look at Tier 3 of Ben's Patreon to see what you get for $25.00 a month. You get three interactive group classes a month and access to all of the previous Group Class Videos. There are currently twelve of them to study. 

You get special sgf files too. You get participation in a Main League where you get games with players close to your rank, handicapped as appropriate. You compete in the main league for prizes of Twitch Lesson Time with Ben. First and second place in each Main League get a prize. You are guaranteed at least one review of a Main League game from Ben for the month and likely more if you play a lot of games.

The Title Tournament is a chance to compete for fun titles against all league players. You can play each one up to three times in the course of the month.  

You get a game with Ben either one-on-one if you are in the A League, or a simul game if you are in B or C league.

I could go on, but check out his Patreon for more details.

If you decide to join BenKyo League tell him that buzzsaw sent you.

Now for my usual content...

This is what my week looked like.

I've gotten tired of showing only my Essential Go Activities and have decided to start sharing all of my activities again. 

I recently watched a video about Michael Redmond. At the end of the video he said that if you are not a professional you should do what you like when studying go. I'm going to take that advice to heart concerning my blogging, and I'm going to show all my activities in my blog content.

For a while I was showing only Essential Go Activity. Now I am going to show it all.

I spent over 27 hours on Go Activity this week.

Much of it was not Essential Go Activity.

I spent over six hours Watching Others Play. While doing so I was practicing reading. I think it was a worthwhile use of my time, and it was also fun.

I played 9 games last week and lost five of them. It is a fairly even result, but it didn't feel that way. I'm not counting the teaching games with Clossius and BenKyo Baduk.

As for Essential Go Activities... 

It was pretty one sided with all of my time spend on Live Play.

I definitely need to start spending some time on Go Problems again, and also Reviewing My Games.

My Week of Go Activities - Reviewing a BenKyo Baduk Lesson

 

Ben Mantel, BenKyo Baduk, has suggested that I play fewer games and spend more time reviewing the games I play. He also believes that it would be beneficial for me to memorize a few things. To that end he has started to take advantage of the OGS variation feature which allows you mark variations in a game record. This feature can be used in a Game Review.

In the image above there are three important elements. 

From left to right we have my MacBook Pro, my Cat, and my iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard.

On the MacBook Pro I have the Game Review which has a great many Variations added. The cat is just sleeping. On the iPad Pro I have the video of my lesson opened. As I watch the video I can stop and hover over variations or click on them to replay them move by move. 

Although it takes a bit of time in the lesson for Ben to enter the variations I think that it is going to be time well spent if it makes the sgf of the Game Review more useful. I've always thought that watching my lesson videos is valuable but have sometimes been frustrated trying to find things in the sgf that I want to click through to memorize or replay.

Now for my usual weekly content:

It was a low activity week for Essential Go Activities. I clocked in at fewer than four hours this week, most of them being Live Play.

I played only five games and one of them was a Teaching Game with Clossius during my lesson.

My Week of Go Activities

 

My post for this week is coming a bit late. I'll be following up with a post abut another week in a few days. The week was heavy on Live Play and very light on Review and Go Problems.

I am still struggling with playing too fast. I need to be more mindful of playing slowly and using my time. 

That is all I have to say for this week.

But, heh, look at all that green. Eleven games played and only three losses. Not bad.

My Week of Go Activities: I Won the Clossi September League

Clossius started up his league again. Now I have another great league to compete in.

Above you will see the results of the first month of League Play. I managed to come out in first place for the month of September which comes with a cool prize of a two hour teaching game. I played eight games and won six of them. 

I've scheduled my prize for Thursday, October 5th at 2:00 PM EDT.

Everyone is welcome to observe my teaching game on Clossi's Twitch Stream.

Check out Shawn's Web Site to join the league.

I spent over six hours on Essential Go Activities this week with most of the time devoted to Live Play. I actually need to do more Go Problems and spend more time Reviewing My Games.

It was a good week for wins. I won six out of seven games.

I decided to have Yilun Yang give me reviews of my two most recent AYD League Games. And I got the brilliant idea of actually linking to a review that another BenKyo League Member did of one of my BenKyo League Games.

BTW, if you show up for a Clossius Game Review Stream there is a possibility that you might be gifted a free one month membership in his league. He did that for one person in stream in the last two streams I attended. He is streaming more often now, so be on the look out for a link to his stream in the upper right corner on OGS.